13th July 2021
Ibrahim has been teaching Lucy Arabic. He tells her that the only really authentic reading of the Qur’an has to be done in its original language. I’m sure there’s something in this. (Plenty of people say the same about the Bible.) But I think it’s going to be hard for someone with no previous knowledge of Semitic languages to become sufficiently fluent to gain more understanding than using a good translation and a commentary (or several commentaries).
Dominic’s learning too. He thinks it’ll be useful for his career, because there aren’t that many RE teachers who are expert in both the Qur’an and the Bible. Lucy tells me that he says there are some similarities with Hebrew, which he studied in his degree. I had a brief crack at New Testament Greek way back at a time when I was considering becoming a Methodist Local Preacher, but I gave up. It was too much like hard work! And anyway, after Stephen died I decided that preaching wasn’t for me.